IoT will be one of the primary drivers of the digital transformation in 2018 and beyond. Using IoT, successful companies will create a self-learning environment. In turn, those will drive digital disruption in the physical world. New business models will emerge, along with changes in work processes, productivity improvements, cost containment and enhanced customer experiences.

Many areas, including healthcare, automotive, smart cities, usage-based insurance, and asset management, will see more interesting projects take off successfully around the world.

With all this in mind, I want to share what I believe will be the top 10 IoT trends in 2018.

Trend 1) Digital Twin

A key tool to improve operations with digital data is the Digital Twin.

Digital Twins are a huge next step in the world of IoT. In brief, the digital twin is a virtual doppelganger of the real-world thing. Important features of digital twins:

Trend 2) Blockchain

In 2018, Blockchain will play a major role by enhancing security, making transactions more seamless and creating efficiencies in the supply chain.

I expect the coming year will be one in which we see companies start to leverage blockchain in three key ways:

Build Trust: Blockchain can help build trust between the people and parties that transact together. IoT blockchain enables devices to participate in blockchain transactions as a trusted party.

Reduce Costs: IoT and blockchain enable participants to reduce monetary and time commitment costs by ultimately removing the “middle man” from the process. Transactions and device data are now exhibited on a peer-to-peer basis, removing most legal or contractual costs.

Accelerate Transactions: IoT and blockchain enable more transactions overall because it removes the middleman from the process. Organizations reduce the time needed for completing legal or contractual commitments through smart contracts.

Trend 3) Security

As you rely on connected devices to make your lives better and easier in 2018, security is a must. All participants in the IoT ecosystem are responsible for the security of the devices, data and solutions.

Next year, the predictions are such that more companies choose the SaaS approach to quickly create and prove out a variety of IoT scenarios at lower investment levels.

Major benefits that SaaS brings to an IoT deployment:

Organizations will realize benefits more quickly.

There’s a lower cost of entry.

There’s also increased flexibility.

Trend 5) Cognitive Thinking

The Internet of Things is at the threshold of a tremendous opportunity. For over a decade, things are being connected with unique IP addresses. But the commoditization of sensors, processors and memory now make it possible to makes everyday things more than just connected … they can be intelligent.

Beyond traditional IoT implementations, cognitive computing increases the amount of data to improve the learning environment. That, then, increases the possibilities of what can be done with edge analytics – making sensors capable of diagnosing and adapting to their environment without the need for human intervention. Another huge advantage of cognitive IoT: the ability to combine multiple data streams that can identify patterns.

Trend 6) IoT Recruitment

In 2018 skillsets around security, AI, robotics, embedded electronics, solution engineering, and data science will continue to be in high demand.

Key findings:

Demand vastly outstrips supply for core AI, IoT, and Cloud talent.

Global In-house Centres drive a majority of the demand in emerging technologies.

Trend 7) Hyper Personalisation

Wearables have become an important segment within IoT and are pushing the boundaries of personalisation like never before. Additionally, wearables will extend so as to enable control of the nature of content with which one engages.

Trend 8) IoT Connectivity

2018 is going to bring a wave of new IoT applications to the markets. New forms of wireless connections and protocols.

Various technologies such as Wi-Max, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Low Power Wi-Fi, LTE, regular Ethernet and the very latest Li-Fi, are already being used to link various parts of IoT to sensors but this year would see Sigfox, LoRaWAN and 3GPP’s narrowband (NB) being tested.

Trend 9) Smart Homes

Smart home devices allow the owners to control and monitor a broad range of verticals like improved home monitoring, access control, security, and energy efficiency.

Many brands in smart homes are collaborating over a variety of appliances to make them smarter, more efficient and secure.

Trend 10) Data Reigns

Conversations on data monetization will take center stage in 2018 as more IoT projects move from proof of concept stage to full-scale deployment. Businesses and vendors already are working towards adding a strong layer of monetization on the business enablement core to further strengthen the value proposition of IoT.

Small and medium businesses will invest in leveraging IoT cloud platforms that are repositories of big data to derive business patterns using analytical algorithms. This will help lower the gap between their company and large businesses in terms of customer experience and competitive differentiation.

I expect these 10 things to play a major role in enterprise IoT in this year 2018. And I fully expect other trends will emerge that aren’t even on the horizon yet. Because IoT is evolving so rapidly, there’s always something new! As we look ahead for new trends, I hope you’re as excited about the IoT world as I am.

Bhargav Thakkar

Experienced Director with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. Bhargav Thakkar is the Director of Magneto IT Solutions, a full service of Web Development in Las Vegas, NV. He has experience of delivering more than 100+ project ranging from web technologies to mobile application technology.